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MPs have accepted hospitality with a value of more than £1,000 from authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and north Africa on 107 occasions in the last decade, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

Fifty-nine current and former MPs, including Alan Duncan, Liam Fox and Keith Vaz, have accepted flights, accommodation and hospitality from regimes including those of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen.

MPs have had to log donations and hospitality on the register of members' interests, and also – if donations are worth £1,000 or more – with the Electoral Commission since 2000. The Guardian has analysed the commission's returns relating to the Middle East to see which countries provide the most high-value hospitality to parliamentarians.

Qatar tops the rankings with 32 trips, at a value of £109,400, followed by Bahrain with 18 trips worth £42,700 and Oman, with 16 trips at £45,040.

Several of the Oman visits were made by Alan Duncan, minister of state at the Department for International Development, who accepted more high-value trips than any other MP.

Duncan visited Oman on seven occasions at the government's expense, including to attend Sultan Qaboos's 40th birthday celebrations last December. Duncan was also on a cross-party visit to Bahrain in 2009. In total, Duncan accepted hospitality worth more than £21,000 from the two countries.

A spokesman for Duncan said all hospitality received complied with parliamentary rules.

"Alan is a Middle East specialist," he said. "He has been going to the region in a personal and official capacity for 30 years. Any hospitality has been fully declared in the register according to House of Commons rules."

Department of Health minister Simon Burns accepted the most trips after Duncan, visiting Qatar on four occasions, and the UAE and Bahrain once each. The total value of his visits was £22,000.

There were also several cases in which MPs accepted sponsored trips to the Middle East funded by outside organisations; the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, for example, declared he received flights and hospitality worth £1,065 from the British Syrian society for a three-day visit to the country in May 2007.

Former international development secretary Clare Short accepted £1,580 worth of flights, hotel accommodation, food and travel expenses from al-Manar television in Lebanon in 2008. Al-Manar is described by the US government as "the media arm of the Hezbollah terrorist network", and was classed as a specially designated terrorist entity by the US in 2006.

Short said her trip had been registered with Commons authorities and that the visit allowed her to see how reconstruction in southern Lebanon was proceeding after the country's conflict with Israel in 2006.

"I did an interview for the TV programme and was free to express my views without censure, and I also met with senior Hezbollah officials," she said. "I do not accept US advice on who I should speak to. UK diplomats also talk with Hezbollah. I have also met with Hamas leaders on a number of occasions as well as Fatah leaders, and the Syrian and Lebanese governments."

Vaz is the only MP on the Electoral Commission's register to have had hospitality from the Yemeni government, which paid the £2,000 costs of his visit in 2006 with the all-party group for Yemen. A spokeswoman for Vaz said he was the chair of the MPs' group and that he had been born in the country. She added that he had paid the cost of flights for subsequent visits, though entries on the register of members' interests do show some internal travel and hospitality funded by the Yemeni government.